How to plan a freelance week by client and project
I built ToDev after years of freelance work, because none of the planning tools I tried held a week of client projects, tasks and notes in one place. A freelance week usually looks like this: 3 clients, a couple of projects each, and tasks that have to fit around each other.
This is the routine ToDev is built around. You can follow it on paper too, as long as every task belongs to a project and every project belongs to a client.
Start from projects, not from one long list
One long to-do list hides how much of the week each client is going to take, and that’s what you need to know on Monday. So keep one list per project instead, and link every project to its client.
In ToDev a project has a colour and a client. Its page shows the open and finished tasks, the invoices and the client together, so when a client asks where things stand, the answer is on one page.
Monday: give every task a day
On Monday, go through each project and give every task you plan to work on this week a day. A task you can’t place yet goes to Unscheduled instead of being squeezed onto Friday, and it waits there until you give it a date.
On the web the week is a board of 7 days, and you move a task by dragging it to another day. On your phone you swipe a task to another day. On iPad, turn it sideways and the week becomes the same 7-day board.
Before you close the plan, check how the week splits between clients. If one client takes 4 days and another has nothing, move things now, while it’s still Monday.
Every morning: start with Today
The morning check takes a couple of minutes. Today shows what’s due, what slipped from earlier days, and which projects have work this week, with how many tasks are left and how many are late.
Late tasks move to today in one tap. So a missed Tuesday doesn’t turn into a list you stop reading, and you decide what really happens today and push the rest to another day.
End of the week: check each project
Before you stop for the week, open each project page. Finished tasks, open tasks and invoices sit together there, so you see what’s left for next week and whether there’s an invoice to record. A project that is finished can be marked done, and reopened if the client comes back with more.
If invoices are the part that slips for you, I wrote about keeping track of unpaid invoices too.
Monday or Sunday
The week can start on Monday or Sunday, and the setting applies on every device. Small, but it matters if Sunday evening is when you plan.
The Basic plan is free for 3 clients, 3 projects, 3 invoices and 120 tasks, on the web, iPhone, iPad and Android, which is enough to try this routine on a real week.